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HE'S CHARLIE, AND LENNY, TOO

Got this email from David Lowenherz of Lion Heart Autographs:

Je_suis_Charlie

I AM CHARLIE, BUT I AM LENNY, TOO

The recent, horrific events in Paris will be remembered as a watershed in the fight for freedom of thought and expression.

Islamic extremists not only massacred journalists, cartoonists and police, but once again attacked and murdered Jews for no other reason than that they were Jewish. Yet, we must remind ourselves that the greatest number of casualties of Muslim extremism are other Muslims and that the vast majority of French Muslims and Muslims around the world have decried terrorist acts committed in the name of their prophet.

What makes the Charlie Hebdo assassinations different, however, is not that innocent people were murdered, but that a fundamental human right came under severe attack. It is not possible to enjoy freedom of thought when freedom of expression is under siege. Thinking, without the opportunity of acting, is oppression of the human spirit.

The German-Jewish Romantic poet, Heinrich Heine, wrote more than 150 years ago about a fictitious burning of books that became a reality a hundred years later in Nazi Germany: "That was all a prelude. There, where they first burn books, they later burn people," to which we must now add, "There, where they first attack freedom of expression, they later attack freedom of thought."

That Charlie Hebdo published vulgar, disgusting or even inflammatory cartoons is beside the point and not a justification for what happened. The fact that these murders proceeded in tandem with an anti-Semitic hate crime is as reprehensible as it is unsurprising.

Yet, let us also recall the life and struggles of the vulgar, tasteless and, under the law of the time, "obscene" American comedian and satirist Lenny Bruce, whose career was destroyed by Americans who sought to impose their definition of morality over his right of free speech.

Lenny Bruce's routines, like Charlie Hebdo's cartoons, were meant to shock, maybe even offend, but they also made us think more deeply about prejudice and posturing. No one was ever forced to attend Bruce's nightclub acts, and no one was forced to purchase Charlie Hebdo's magazine, which was in deep financial straits having lost a considerable amount of its readers over the years. Ironically, tomorrow’s issue will likely have a print run fifty times greater than normal. The magazine now has more supporters than ever before. Similarly, despite the "obscene" nature of Lenny Bruce's writing, one can still buy recordings of his performances nearly 50 years after his death, and New York's Governor George Pataki posthumously pardoned him for obscenity in 2003. What extremists fail to recognize is that the free world is prepared to take a united stand against any attack on liberty.

Every nation has had critics whose ideas have been suppressed by hateful groups or authoritarian regimes. The action to be taken now is not to point fingers but to stand up and affirm that the pen is and always must be mightier than the sword.

We have made a financial contribution to the Committee to Protect Journalists at https://www.cpj.org/ in an effort to fight against acts of tyranny endured by those who are prepared to sacrifice their lives to bring us uncensored news and opinions about the world in which we live.

David H. Lowenherz

President

dlowenherz@lionheartinc.com

www.lionheartautographs.com

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